Woman's work in America

by Unknown

“If a Hindoo principality is strongly, vigilantly, and economically governed,” continues this earnest friend and student of woman, “if order is preserved without oppression; if cultivation is extending, and the people prosperous, in three cases out of four that principality is under a woman’s government.” And he tells us “he has collected this fact from a long official knowledge of Hindoo governments.” “There are many such instances,” he continues. “For though, by Hindoo institutions, a woman cannot reign, she is the legal regent of a kingdom during the minority of the heir. And minorities are frequent, the lives of the male rulers being so often prematurely terminated through the effect of inactivity and sensual excesses. When we consider that these princesses have never been seen in public, have never conversed with any man not of their own family except from behind a curtain, that they do not read, and if they did there is no book in their language which can give them the smallest instruction in political affairs, the example they afford of the natural capacity of women for government is very striking.”

It was not, however, until the fifteenth century that there was a marked tendency to recognize the general equality of women with men. During the days of feudalism, it was debated, very earnestly, whether women should be educated or not, and it was generally believed that a knowledge of letters would put into their hands an additional power to work evil. Nevertheless, at all periods, whenever and wherever we can trace a literature, we find women shining in it. Feudalism may be considered to have perished at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and a new period of transition had arrived, to which historical writers have given the name of “The Renaissance.”

In 1506, Cornelius Agrippa, eminent in the literary society of his time, wrote a book not only to prove that men and women are equals intellectually, but that woman is superior to man. In 1552, another work of similar scope appeared, based on the Platonic philosophy, the purpose of which was a defense of woman’s superiority. In 1599, Anthony Gibson sent into the world a third volume, again reiterating “the superiority of women to men, in all virtuous actions, no matter how fine the quality of men may be proved to be.” At the same time books were also being published by other vigorous writers of the day, who stoutly denied to women the possession of reason, and maintained their eminence in iniquity only.

In 1696, Daniel Defoe contended for the better education of women, declaring his belief that if men were trained in the same deplorable ignorance as women, they would be vastly more incompetent and degraded. In 1697, Mary Astell “distinguished for literary and theological labors,” wrote a letter in “Defense of the Female Sex,” which passed through three editions. An appeal to women written by the same author, entitled, “A Proposal to Ladies for the Advancement of their True Interests,” advocated their general education, and besought their co-operation in some worthy educational scheme. It so wrought on Lady Elizabeth Hastings, a wealthy noble lady, that she immediately offered ten thousand pounds for the establishment of a college for women. It was a grand proposition, and would have been carried out but for the opposition of the bigoted Bishop Burnet.

At that time Italy led all other nations in literary activity, and then, as now, was remarkable for her pride in her learned women. Lucrezia Morinella of Venice wrote a work entitled, “The Nobleness and Excellence of Women, together with the Faults and Imperfections of Men.” The University of Bologna, which admitted women as students, and conferred degrees upon them as early as the middle of the thirteenth century, at last elevated them to professorships, where they taught law and philosophy, physiology and anatomy, Latin and Greek. The annals of Italian literature, scholarship, and art, are radiant with the names of women who distinguished themselves in various departments, and were honored by the men of that day, who proudly testified to their abilities and achievements. Women of France and Italy interested themselves in medical science, and we read of a woman who lectured in the sixteenth century on obstetrics “to large classes of both sexes.”

In England, there was the same mental quickening among women, as on the continent. Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, and found herself immediately confronted with perplexities, embarrassments, and anxieties. She was obliged to face religious bigots at home, and unscrupulous kings abroad; her people were rent with differences of religious belief, were rude, ignorant, and inert; her noblemen were factious, her exchequer empty, her parliaments jealous of her; there was neither army nor navy, and the nation was poor and embarrassed with debt. But her stout heart, strong will, and wise head were soon felt in every part of her kingdom. The Reformation begun by Luther had stimulated England to great activity, had loosened the hold of the church upon both men and women, and the way was being prepared for that grand development of religious and civil liberty which has since followed.

During the Elizabethan era, the great ideas were born which immediately underlie our present civilization. Government, religion, literature, and social life were then discussed as never before, earnestly, and by great thinkers, and reforms were inaugurated that lifted the world to a higher level. Not only was the age enriched by great men of marvelous political wisdom, financial skill, comprehensive intellect, and original genius, but there were noble women in England, who, holding high social position, devoted their leisure and their wealth to studious pursuits, and emulated the superior men of the day. How grandly they illuminated the circles that gathered about them, while the majority of their sex wasted their time in frivolous pursuits!

It was in the midst of this intense intellectual ferment, and as the result of it, that the settlement of our country began. While the Church of England had emancipated itself from the Papal power at immense cost of life and treasure, and after generations of conflict, it had not learned the great law of religious freedom. Our forefathers made war on the divine right of bishops, and the authority of the church to control their consciences, and were driven by persecution to America. Here they prospered, were subject to Great Britain, and for a time were contented. But when in America they were denied the rights granted to Englishmen living in England, their discontent became general, and the Declaration of Independence and the War of the Revolution followed. They were not hot-headed philosophers, crazed by the theories of the French revolution, as many to-day would have us believe. The “glittering generalities” of the Declaration of Independence, as Rufus Choate sneeringly called the immortal principles of our great charter of liberty, were not deductions from Rousseau, Voltaire, or any other French philosopher. They were simply the reiteration of the rights of English citizenship, expanded and adapted to the exigencies of the new world in which the colonists had planted themselves. For the American civilization is only a continuation of the English civilization, under new conditions—some of them more favorable, and others less so. Before there was a revolution in France, or a democracy in France, Jefferson’s most democratic words had been spoken in America. And all the facts go to show that if there was any learning from each other in political science, between him and the French philosophers, they were the pupils, and not Jefferson. They were men of untarnished moral character; religion and patriotism were to them synonymous terms, and their love of liberty developed into a passion. The world has never seen grander, more versatile, nor more self-poised men, than the founders of our nation.

What of the women associated with these heroes? “The ammunition of the Continental soldiery in the war for freedom came from the pulpit, and the farmer’s fireside,” said one of the orators on a recent centennial occasion. The men of the Revolution had no cowardly, faint-hearted mothers and wives to hang about their neck like millstones. Their women were as heroic in fiber as themselves. Patriotic mothers nursed the infancy of freedom. They talked with their children of the wrongs of the people, and of their invaded rights, and uttered their aspirations for a better state of things in language of intensest force. Sons and daughters grew sensitive to the tyranny that oppressed their parents, and as they came to maturity burned with a desire to defend their rights to the utmost.

During the French and Indian wars of the country that preceded the war of the Revolution, women learned to rely on themselves, became experts in the use of fire-arms, and in many instances defended themselves and their children. They were fired with the same love of liberty as the men—they were equally stung with the aggressions of the British government, and as resolute in their determination to resist them. They encouraged them to enter the army, cheered them when despondent, toned them to heroic firmness when wavering, and cheerfully assumed every burden which the men dropped to repel the invaders of their country and their homes.